An Open Letter to Leadership in Action
Illustration/Isabel Hou
By Megan Vidovich
A waste of time. A waste of money. These are the last things students want to hear about their nearly $80,000-per-year Ivy League graduate program. But at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, disrespecting students’ time and money is a core part of the curriculum.
Welcome to Leadership in Action, a requirement of the renewed Master of International Affairs and Master of Public Administration programs at SIPA that launched in Fall 2025.
For those who haven’t had the privilege of studying leadership at SIPA, Leadership in Action is a 1.5-credit, six-week course with 110 minutes of lecture and 110 minutes of mandatory recitation per week. The lectures analyze decision-making frameworks and leadership case studies from the Harvard Business Review. The recitations put students into a simulation setting where they represent various fictional stakeholders who respond to a convoluted cybersecurity threat.
Leadership in Action was described in its syllabus as a way for students to “develop leadership instincts that can withstand uncertainty, complexity, and high-stakes decision-making,” what the class truly developed was students’ disdain for SIPA’s curriculum management.
According to SIPA’s Office of Financial Aid, a SIPA credit costs anywhere from $2,645 to $2,974. For a 1.5 credit course like Leadership in Action, that averages out to about $4,200. The time spent in a Leadership in Action class session totals 22 hours.
The Morningside Post heard the buzz of discontent surrounding the infamous class. During the first week of March 2026, amid Leadership in Action’s final examinations, we broadcasted a survey across SIPA student group chats and email chains to discover how students really feel about Leadership in Action.
Fifty students were quick to share their stories.
Do you feel like this course was a good use of time? 82% of respondents said no.
Do you feel like this course was a good use of money? 88% of respondents said no.
A common complaint stemmed from the rigidity of the new requirement, which had been applied to all students regardless of their diverse professional backgrounds. 54% of respondents indicated that they had at least one year of professional leadership experience prior to attending SIPA.
One MPA ‘27 student, a former account manager at a communications agency, shared her frustrations upon follow-up: “I’ve had several years of experience with leadership and with working as part of a team. I don’t feel like this class taught me anything about leadership.”
A few students took the time to share elements of the course that they enjoyed. They found value in the case studies and enjoyed the simulation for its team-building. Otherwise, the responses were overwhelmingly negative.
Many complained about the course’s reliance on abstract frameworks, which they described as lacking practical value and “kinda pointless.” One student, who worked in a national government for multiple years, shared, “Treating leadership as the use of frameworks risks shrinking it into technique rather than engaging with its core challenges.”
In one scathing review, a student described the course as “the worst academic experience” they had ever had. They continued, saying, “Leadership courses have been done a thousand times… yet SIPA managed to completely botch the implementation of this course.”
To be clear, calling out the pitfalls of Leadership in Action is not meant to target any individual instructor. The reviews were, on average, evenly distributed across teaching teams. Many surveyed students emphasized that their distaste for the course was not the fault of their respective professors, but a reflection of the overall course structure.
As a SIPA student who took Leadership in Action in Spring 2026, I am glad to have found through surveying my peers that I was not alone in my contempt.
In the language of the course, we could change our perspectives from the dance floor to the balcony and collaborate to develop innovative solutions to improve Leadership in Action.
But I am tired of dancing. I will take the initiative and say what appears to be on most students’ minds: Leadership in Action is an insult to our collective intelligence. It’s a measureable waste of time and an unjustifiable waste of money.
As an Ivy League institution, Columbia promises an elite education. Whether due to negligence or greed, SIPA's approach to teaching leadership has tarnished its reputation. Mandating a curriculum that disregards students’ lived experiences, time, and money is plainly poor leadership—and I don’t need a class to tell me that.